Development of feedforward anti-sway control for highly efficient and safety crane operation

Container handling at harbor is conducted using container cranes and rail-mounted gantry cranes (RMGCs). To attain high handling efficiency, an automatic crane operation system needs to adopt a load anti-sway control. On the other hand, safe handling operation not colliding a load with stacked containers in the yard is required. To this point, we applied a method to preliminarily calculate the crane motions that avoid collision with stacked containers and that can prevent load swaying, in the form of a feedforward pattern. We developed a control method combining the feedforward control with a feedback control using an optimum regulator, and combined the control method with the automatic operation system. The automatic operation system was tested on a crane, and the effectiveness was proved.